Famous Thrift Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Thrift poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous thrift poems. These examples illustrate what a famous thrift poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Betjeman, John
...tea-time tide
Slaps at the rocks the sun has dried,
Too lazy, almost, to sink and lift
Round low peninsulas pink with thrift.
The water, enlarging shells and sand,
Grows greener emerald out from land
And brown over shadowy shelves below
The waving forests of seaweed show.
Here at my feet in the short cliff grass
Are shells, dried bladderwrack, broken glass,
Pale blue squills and yellow rock roses.
The next low ridge that we climb discloses
One more field fo...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...des;
And while his eyes are on the Cyprian
He's fribbling all the time with that damned House.
We laugh here at his thrift, but after all
It may be thrift that saves him from the devil;
God gave it, anyhow, -- and we'll suppose
He knew the compound of his handiwork.
To-day the clouds are with him, but anon
He'll out of 'em enough to shake the tree
Of life itself and bring down fruit unheard-of, --
And, throwing in the bruised and whole together,
Prepare a wine to mak...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...m into snares. When once her eye
Hath met the virtue of this magic dust,
I shall appear some harmless villager
Whom thrift keeps up about his country gear.
But here she comes; I fairly step aside,
And hearken, if I may her business hear.
The LADY enters.
LADY. This way the noise was, if mine ear be true,
My best guide now. Methought it was the sound
Of riot and ill-managed merriment,
Such as the jocund flute or gamesome pipe
Stirs up among the loose...Read more of this...
by
Betjeman, John
...id-day sun.
A far-off blow-hole booming like a gun-
The seagulls plane and circle out of sight
Below this thirsty, thrift-encrusted height,
The veined sea-campion buds burst into white
And gorse turns tawny orange, seen beside
Pale drifts of primroses cascading wide
To where the slate falls sheer into the tide.
More than in gardened Surrey, nature spills
A wealth of heather, kidney-vetch and squills
Over these long-defended Cornish hills.
A gun-emplacement of ...Read more of this...
by
Hardy, Thomas
...kept by me."
Far.--"Ye mid zell my favorite heifer, ye mid let the charlock grow,
Foul the grinterns, give up thrift."
Wife.--"If ye break my best blue china, children, I sha'n't care or
ho."
All--"We've no wish to hear the tidings, how the people's fortunes
shift;
What your daily doings are;
Who are wedded, born, divided; if your lives beat slow or swift.
"Curious not the least are we if our intents you make or mar,
If you quire to our old tune,
I...Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...sgrave.
For he was blest as a merchant.
For the blessing of Jacob was in the spirit and Esau's for temporal thrift.
For the story of Orpheus is of the truth.
For there was such a person a cunning player on the harp.
For he was a believer in the true God and assisted in the spirit.
For he play'd upon the harp in the spirit by breathing upon the strings.
For this will affect every thing that is sustaind by the spirit, even every thing i...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...ops
To the numberless beating drops
Of the incessant rain.
He counts it as no sin
That he sees therein
Only his own thrift and gain.
These, and far more than these,
The Poet sees!
He can behold
Aquarius old
Walking the fenceless fields of air;
And from each ample fold
Of the clouds about him rolled
Scattering everywhere
The showery rain,
As the farmer scatters his grain.
He can behold
Things manifold
That have not yet been wholly told,--
Have not been wholly sun...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...gains, and hard his work; besides,
Their slender household fortunes (for the man
Had risk'd his little) like the little thrift,
Trembled in perilous places o'er a deep:
And oft, when sitting all alone, his face
Would darken, as he cursed his credulousness,
And that one unctuous mount which lured him, rogue,
To buy strange shares in some Peruvian mine.
Now seaward-bound for health they gain'd a coast,
All sand and cliff and deep-inrunning cave,
At close of day; slept, woke...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ionately seen and yearn’d for by one poor little child,
While others remain busy, or smartly talking, forever teaching thrift, thrift;)
O you up there! O pennant! where you undulate like a snake, hissing so curious,
Out of reach—an idea only—yet furiously fought for, risking bloody
death—loved
by me!
So loved! O you banner leading the day, with stars brought from the night!
Valueless, object of eyes, over all and demanding all—(absolute owner of ALL)—O
banner and
penn...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...br>
O love and summer! you are in the dreams, and in me!
Autumn and winter are in the dreams—the farmer goes with his thrift,
The droves and crops increase, and the barns are well-fill’d.
16
Elements merge in the night—ships make tacks in the dreams,
The sailor sails—the exile returns home,
The fugitive returns unharm’d—the immigrant is back beyond months and years,
The poor Irishman lives in the simple house of his childhood, with the well-known
neighbors and
fa...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...s them in return, and understands
them;
Where no monuments exist to heroes, but in the common words and deeds;
Where thrift is in its place, and prudence is in its place;
Where the men and women think lightly of the laws;
Where the slave ceases, and the master of slaves ceases;
Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity of elected persons;
Where fierce men and women pour forth, as the sea to the whistle of death pours its
sweeping
and
unript wa...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...the lintel of the sunk sty door
To gape at it:
This was no rose-and-larkspurred china suckling
With a penny slot
For thrift children, nor dolt pig ripe for heckling,
About to be
Glorified for prime flesh and golden crackling
In a parsley halo;
Nor even one of the common barnyard sows,
Mire-smirched, blowzy,
Maunching thistle and knotweed on her snout-
cruise--
Bloat tun of milk
On the move, hedged by a litter of feat-foot ninnies
Shrilling her hulk
To halt for a swig at...Read more of this...
by
Dyke, Henry Van
...hickory ready for winter,
The gambrel-roof with its garret crowded with household relics, --
All the tokens of prudent thrift and the spirit of self-reliance.
I love the look of the shingled houses that front the ocean;
Their backs are bowed, and their lichened sides are weather-beaten;
Soft in their colour as grey pearls, they are full of patience and courage.
They seem to grow out of the rocks, there is something indomitable about them:
Facing the briny wind in a...Read more of this...
by
Parker, Dorothy
...he'd rock Him to His rest
As if she could not have Him leave
The shelter of her breast.
The poor must go in bitter thrift,
The poor must give in pain,
But ever did she get a gift
To greet His day again.
They say she'd kiss the Boy awake,
And hail Him gay and clear,
But oh, her heart was like to break
To count another year....Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...mplicity
And thought, "All this is done but for a wile.
They weenen* that no man may them beguile, *think
But by my thrift yet shall I blear their eye,
For all the sleight in their philosophy.
The more *quainte knackes* that they make, *odd little tricks*
The more will I steal when that I take.
Instead of flour yet will I give them bren*. *bran
The greatest clerks are not the wisest men,
As whilom to the wolf thus spake the mare:
Of all their art ne co...Read more of this...
by
Walcott, Derek
...ting lawns,
the flame trees obeyed his will and lowered their wicks,
the flowers tightened their fists in the name of thrift,
the porcelain lamps of ripe cocoa, the magnolia's jet
dimmed on the one circuit with the ginger lilies
and left a lonely bulb on the verandah,
and, had his mandate extended to that ceiling
of star-apple candelabra, he would have ordered
the sky to sleep, saying, I'm tired,
save the starlight for victories, we can't afford it,
leave the moon o...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...;
Your eye-lids have been the same as closed most of the time;
What you have done returns already in mockeries;
(Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their
return?)
The mockeries are not you;
Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk;
I pursue you where none else has pursued you;
Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustom’d routine, if
these
conceal you from others, or from yourself, they do not...Read more of this...
by
Betjeman, John
...We used to picnic where the thrift
Grew deep and tufted to the edge;
We saw the yellow foam flakes drift
In trembling sponges on the ledge
Below us, till the wind would lift
Them up the cliff and o’er the hedge.
Sand in the sandwiches, wasps in the tea,
Sun on our bathing dresses heavy with the wet,
Squelch of the bladder-wrack waiting for the sea,
Fleas around the tamarisk, an ear...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...herte shriven;
And sin ye woot that myn entente is clene,
Tak hede ther-of, for I non yvel mene.
'And right good thrift, I prey to god, have ye,
That han swich oon y-caught with-oute net;
And be ye wys, as ye ben fair to see,
Wel in the ring than is the ruby set.
Ther were never two so wel y-met,
Whan ye ben his al hool, as he is youre:
Ther mighty god yet graunte us see that houre!'
'Nay, therof spak I not, a, ha!' quod she,
'As helpe me god, ye shenden every de...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ak, nece myn, your leve at alle three,
And lat hem speke, and cometh forth with me.'
She took hir leve at hem ful thriftily,
As she wel coude, and they hir reverence
Un-to the fulle diden hardely,
And speken wonder wel, in hir absence,
Of hir, in preysing of hir excellence,
Hir governaunce, hir wit; and hir manere
Commendeden, it Ioye was to here.
Now lat hir wende un-to hir owne place,
And torne we to Troilus a-yein,
That gan ful lightly of the lettre passe
That...Read more of this...
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